Back on 11-19-2013 in the Free shipping thread you stated "Note that the average order size is about $48"

I was just looking at my numbers since converting back to an Affiliate from Drop Ship ... As a Drop Ship I was able to average around $70 - $90 ...

In November here I averaged $75 / In December here I averaged $64 / In January here I averaged $96.

So my questions are:
1) What is the average order now
2) What changed in December to drop the order value
3) Even though total sales for the month of December were better than January, having a $10 average drop from November is not great (not a real worry), but a $30 difference from December to January is important to look at. If even the $10 higher value of November could have been maintain for December that adds up FAST.

I sometimes wonder if "pushing" the cheap toys is negatively effecting the total order value. When I drop shipped I never had a banner or link to toys under $25, I had a filter to easily find them, but I did not "push" them. To me the only time you push a toy in the under $25 range is for add on sales. This can be seen on Amazon ... when the prompt is there saying "if you buy $xx.xx you get ____ " so if I was designing the CMS I would make sure to use that type of idea. Push the higher value toys in banners etc and for the people that are under the $75 mark then push the lower value toys. A price filter works GREAT for this!

Back on 11-19-2013 in the Free shipping thread you stated "Note that the average order size is about $48"

I was just looking at my numbers since converting back to an Affiliate from Drop Ship ... As a Drop Ship I was able to average around $70 - $90 ...

In November here I averaged $75 / In December here I averaged $64 / In January here I averaged $96.

So my questions are:
1) What is the average order now

The average order has been just under $50 (not including shipping) for about 20 years! I am shocked at how consistent it remains despite efforts to change it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan O

2) What changed in December to drop the order value

Our average order value has not dropped. Where are you getting your stats? I wonder if you changed the way you are measuring and now its correct. Or I would ask you how the heck you had that high average order value. Were you doing some unique upsell marketing?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan O

3) Even though total sales for the month of December were better than January, having a $10 average drop from November is not great (not a real worry), but a $30 difference from December to January is important to look at. If even the $10 higher value of November could have been maintain for December that adds up FAST.

Where are you getting this info and based on how many sales. Things do bounce around especially if the volume is not huge. We did not see that kind of a drop in December.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan O

I sometimes wonder if "pushing" the cheap toys is negatively effecting the total order value. When I drop shipped I never had a banner or link to toys under $25, I had a filter to easily find them, but I did not "push" them. To me the only time you push a toy in the under $25 range is for add on sales. This can be seen on Amazon ... when the prompt is there saying "if you buy $xx.xx you get ____ " so if I was designing the CMS I would make sure to use that type of idea. Push the higher value toys in banners etc and for the people that are under the $75 mark then push the lower value toys. A price filter works GREAT for this!

Several months ago we changed our "best seller" sort to be based on the actual total dollar volume ranking. Taking out other factors moved some high prices further up on the sort results. This lowered conversions a bit but also increased revenue.
We do promote Clearance and inexpensive items because they get sales. But we also promote Luxury vibrators, rabbits and dildos.

The average order has been just under $50 (not including shipping) for about 20 years! I am shocked at how consistent it remains despite efforts to change it.

Our average order value has not dropped. Where are you getting your stats? I wonder if you changed the way you are measuring and now its correct. Or I would ask you how the heck you had that high average order value. Were you doing some unique upsell marketing?

The numbers are GA numbers ... once a month I try to check them against the MFW orders report to ensure everything is tracking well.

Many of my customers a long time repeat customers that understand the value of a quality toy and don't mind spending the money. Or they buy multiple items for "the weekend"

I've been told multiple times that the customers I have are not the "usual"

Quote:

Where are you getting this info and based on how many sales. Things do bounce around especially if the volume is not huge. We did not see that kind of a drop in December.

Yes I'm still re-building so my number of orders is "small", which can be easily influenced from month to month. This was why I thought I should open the discussion.

Quote:

Several months ago we changed our "best seller" sort to be based on the actual total dollar volume ranking. Taking out other factors moved some high prices further up on the sort results. This lowered conversions a bit but also increased revenue.
We do promote Clearance and inexpensive items because they get sales. But we also promote Luxury vibrators, rabbits and dildos.

Maybe a better way is me saying I don't promote the toys under $25 is ... Any money / email / newsletter I send out / spend money on will be based on getting a high priced item sold. Using the latest email / newsletter blast as an example the highlighted items were $58.96. I would have thought that the email would encourage them to spend $75. If they are on the list already to get the email they already know that the site has toys in every price range, so even if they don't want to spend $75 you have placed your self fresh in their mind so if they want something they will click the link and shop.

Another example is Best Buy sending me an Ad for the latest 4K 3D TV, I'm not going to buy one, but if I need a TV I will still click the link and look for the TV I want. Which since I was presented with the most expensive TV (on sale) that is the latest tech I'm now willing to pay a little more for the TV I buy because it is still cheaper than the $8000.00 one and I don't want to be to far behind the rest of the world. Also if I do want the 4K 3D TV, well I'm now encourage to buy it.

So I always market the best quality and latest tech, the 1000's of other stuff will sell itself if your CMS has the tools easily laid out for the customer to find what they want, which MFW does.
added the following day
P.S. This is why I'm a bit surprised the MFW does not carry the Njoy line. Selling one plug and the lube they will buy to go with it is at the $70 mark (or more).

1st link: Mens-Toys ... with the list set to 24 items the most expensive item is $35 and even when you are listing 72 items the percent of items priced above $60 is tiny.

2nd link: Booty Glove Massage ... $20
3rd link: Apollo Auto Power Pump Smoke ... $73 ... great price but out of stock (unless they customer realizes it is in stock using the small text below)

4th link: Rude Boy Prostate Massager ... $63 ... good price

5th link: Super Soft 1.5" C Ring ... $9 ... terrible price

6th link: 8" Hollow Strap-On ... $28

7th link: F*ck Me Silly Masturbator ... $470 ... I hope they all click on this

8th link: Adonis Extension ... $13 ... terrible price

9th link: Wireless Rockin Rabbit ... $23

10th link: Bondage ... again very small percent of items above $60

11th link: Rabbit / balls promo ... $59

So to me it seems obvious that if your average customer only buys one item that your average order will only be in the $50 range, granted one or two orders a month for the Fuck me silly will definitely help tremendously, but it seems like lower priced items are being marketed.

Now if it shows that the average customer buys 2 items (or more) then some of the items start to become ok to market.

I'm in no way saying its all wrong! I'm saying manipulate it a little in your favor

Some examples:

The email sends me into the bondage category, BUT it is default sorted by Best Selling, a simple change of sort to User Ratings completely changes the Customers view and the pricing with out scaring them away with all $400 items.

The same happens in the Mens Toys ... just changing to User Ratings helps.

And to be honest just putting a price filter on the link (anything above $30) helps a ton no matter how the category is sorted.

I will also put this in the thread that talks about the new CMS ... when an item is available from multiple vendors AND it is out of stock from the primary vendor (http://www.sextoy.com/Mens-Toys/Peni...e/sku-SE103620) the "out of stock" should trigger a if / then statement that highlights the "- More buying choices: " to get the customers eye to easily see that it is actually still available.

The "Your Sexual Prowess Will Amaze Your Valentine" email was so much better! The only thing that I would have changed is the actual link for "Explore the Grey Area" it is currently CID 44 with no sort: http://www.discrete-sensations.com/Bondage?&cid=44

One thing I know that drives up my average sales on my own stores is offering free shipping over a $$ amount. I used to do for orders of $100+ and recently lowered it to $50 and have had a boatload more sales (though my average sale is still over $100 due to my most popular products).

So I wonder if this would be something we could offer on our stores???

I know we can offer it as a coupon code (I have one running for $10 off an order of $100 right now), but if this were a feature we could add globally, it would be awesome!

Also I tested and found that the coupon codes created on the old stores DO work on the new ones, but the coupon entry box is really buried at the bottom of step 5. Would love to see it more prominent and closer to the start of the checkout process. I actually have a box in both places on my own store and find it does well.

When I did Drop Shipping I had to play with that number to figure out what worked best for my store ... meaning if your average order is already $60 why give free shipping to an order that is only $60, you are just literally giving away money.

I started free shipping at $100 then went down to $70 and found from a "getting them to add to their order" and not just giving away money that $89 was my target. I had many items that were selling right at the $70 range at the time and so getting them to spend an extra $30 for $9 in shipping was not happening. But they would add $15 to get the free $9 shipping especially if they had $80 in their cart, they looked at it like a free gift.

With that said I think a Free shipping mod is great especially if it can be adjusted to an appropriate price for each store ... add to the free shipping mod as a checkout pop up that says spend $XX.XX more and get free shipping tied to the price filter and you have a WINNER!